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Yet another T attraction thread (after termination

Posted by beautymarked on December 1, 2007, at 11:57:49

So, I thought I could handle termination well, but apparently I cannot. I hope you all can bear with me through this post…my thoughts are scattered, obsessing about random things here and there. I’m actually not really in any kind of emotional distress, just my mind is completely preoccupied on my T—mostly because I can’t figure him out, and I so desperately want to. I’m jealous about all you who see your T’s on an ongoing basis! Also, I’ve talked to some of you in the chat, and thank you for your advice! I’m sorry I’m asking for more advice—I thought I would internalize him and move on, but apparently not…this is going to be quite long.

So here is my background info: I’m a college student, the only therapy I’ve gotten is in my college counseling center, and including this guy, I’ve seen 3 T’s. I’ve only requested male T’s (I saw a female T for one session, but didn’t feel comfortable so quickly changed). As a student, we are limited to a certain number of free sessions. Now in the past, I’ve never had a problem with this. When I terminated with my first T, I was fine. I never actually terminated with my second. I found out that he had gone and opened up his own private practice upon calling this school year…to which I reasoned as fine and acceptable. I wasn’t really upset at all, especially when I saw my T this year. He was attractive and his style seemed to have resembled my second T, but in actuality I think the resemblance was not really there. The first 2 T’s had excellent strict boundaries, so I knew always what to expect and never missed or regretted anything. I think this is what is causing so many of our posters’ attraction issues…the boundaries being unsure, or maybe it’s actually his therapy orientation (psychodynamic??). He is a predoctoral intern, which may contribute to the boundaries being unsure.

I think I was confused what to make of him most of the time. I mostly wanted to believe he was exactly like my previous T, but he wasn’t when it’d come to him asking questions that would reflect what I thought of him and our therapeutic relationship. I would be totally thrown off track, and wasn’t sure what he wanted me to be or do in the relationship, because at that point I could really be anything. Once he opened up the doors to the interaction being between us, there were so many different layers I could see (that didn’t exist in my previous T relationships), but never talked about because I wasn’t sure if it was OK to or what he wanted. It frustrated me because this caused feelings in me that I wanted to talk about but refrained from doing so because it felt inappropriate, yet he had opened the doors and revealed weakness in himself making me feel like I wanted to protect him (which I also found incredibly attractive).

Anyway, I’m left with a lot of regrets about not being completely honest or aware of the feelings I had towards him. I thought I was portraying what would be thought of as the sane college student (ego) instead of showing my uncontrolled thoughts (Id) underneath, but now that we’ve terminated, I can’t really go back. I’ve actually been frantically researching my insurance to figure out I can go back, but I don’t want to because it’d be embarrassing to go back considering our termination was so final. And maybe all these thoughts I have are not really anything—they’re definitely not anything compared to the serious boundary violations a lot of you have had…but I still want to figure out could he see through me? What did he actually mean by what he was saying? What’d he actually think? His statements like As you were talking, I had a lot of feelings stir up inside of me (what feelings??! Can you relate to me and do we have a lot of similarities?) and his questions like Did you have any problems with your father? (but not my mother?! Do you think I am projecting childlike qualities at you making you feel like you’re my father figure???) and Do you feel like you need to protect me (ack! Can you tell that I like you? What would it mean if I did?). During our termination session, after I avoided talking about our therapeutic relationship (which was in actuality what I really wanted to talk about), he said that he liked me and felt connected to me and didn’t know if I showed him the real sides of me, but felt like it’d be good for me if I showed other people my real sides. Did he really mean that he liked me? Or is it some sort of therapeutic technique? Unconditional positive regard? And isn’t it bad technique to say and fulfill my need to be liked rather than helping me like myself? Did he show doubt about the real me because he could tell I was hiding my true feelings of attraction in response to his questions? Or did he feel countertransference feelings of attraction or being fatherlike that made him doubt my responses? Reading all this now makes me feel silly. I’m sure you’re all going to say, of course he did like you. But it frustrates me because I can’t tell. I can’t read him. I’m not even sure if he was authentic (he was always very controlled and not spontaneous when he was speaking). I want to know to what extent and how much he did, and if he thought I was attractive. It’s too bad. He is probably the most attractive entire package I’ve ever met in my entire life, and I have no clue who he really is or if he feels any of the same thing. I want to figure him out…can you guys help me? I’m frustrated because I think even no matter what you guys say, I think I’ll still be obsessing about him in the hopes that I randomly run into him.

Sorry for the long post. :/


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poster:beautymarked thread:798087
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20071120/msgs/798087.html